Review Article

Whatever Happened to Organ izationalAnthropology? A Review of the Field of

Organ izational Ethnography and

Anthropological Studies

S. P. Bate1,2

An organization theorist friend of mine told me how she had recently

paid a friendly visit to an anthropological meeting, only to find everyone

there insisting on speaking to her v-e-r-y, v-e -r-y, s-l-o-w-l-y, so there might

be some chance of her following what they were saying. It was as though

she were a 4-ye ar-old with learning difficultie s, she said. I begin with this

ane cdote because it highlights the divide that currently exists between or-

ganization behavior (OB) and anthropology. 3 Although changes are afoot,

most notice ably in the U.S., the situation today is generally characterized

by OB people who know and care little about anthropology, and anthro-

pologists who take possibly even less interest in organizations.

It has not always been like this. OB, as Baba (1986) and Morey and

Morey (1994) point out, is a comparative ly young fie ld which, surprisingly

Hum an Relations, Vol. 50, No. 9, 1997

1147

0018-7267/97/0900-1147 $12.50/1 Ó 1997 The Tavistock Institute

1School of Management , Unive rsity of Bath, Claverton Down BA2 7AY, U.K.2Requests for reprints should be addressed to S. P. Bate, School of Management, Unive rsity

of Bath, Claverton Down BA2 7AY, U.K.3Following Ge ertz (1988) , the term “anthropology ” is used in this article mainly as equivalent

to “ethnography.” Although this is inexact, the subtleties of the difference need not greatlyconcern us in a broad revie w like this. In any case, imprecision has always gone with the

territory: “The term ‘ethnography’ is not clearly defined in common usage,” writes Ham-mersle y (1990, p. 1) , “and there is some disagree me nt about what count and do not count

as examples of it.” However, for the purposes of this article I take Hammersley and Atkin-son’s definition as my starting point: “In its most characteristic form it involves the ethnog-

rapher participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extende d period oftime, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions—in fact, collecting

whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research”(1995, p. 1) . For a specific definition of organizational ethnography and a rece nt review of

the field see Mouly and Sankaran’s recent book (1995, Chap. 1). Another rece nt collectionby Linstead et al. (1996) also deals with the neglected topic of the social anthropology of

managem ent.

to many perhaps, was originally created by anthropologists by way of the

pione ering Hawthorne studies. It was they who also gave OB its first journal

(Human Organization ), and it was a social anthropologi st, W. F. Whyte

(1969) , who wrote the first textbook in organizational behavior. Somewhere

along the way, however, the two fields got separate d, and organization stud-

ies gradually lost touch with the essential qualitie s of anthropology.

The purpose of the article is to speculate on the nature of the “eth-

nographic que st,” and on what might be gaine d from trying to put organi-

zation studie s and anthropology back toge ther again in some form or

other.4 Some at least are in no doubt on this score:

Organization theory has an important topic; anthropology has a promising method.

If the two can be put together more systematically and consistently, maybe the resultwould help us understand what we experience during the major part of our adult

lives. (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992, p. 4)

Can social anthropology contribute to OB and manage ment research,

and in what way might it offer it some new energie s and directions for the

field? The que stion is de libe rate ly one -sided. I am not assuming that all is

rosy in the anthropology garde n, indeed it has been receiving its own share

of criticism in recent times (cf. Hammersley, 1992) , but to consider it the

other way round would require a diffe rent kind of article .

Unlike Czarniawska-Joe rges (1992), who did a similar exercise to this

one but in a full-le ngth book, I have chosen not to see the problem in

terms of a Robert Johnson-like journey back to the crossroads where an-

thropolo gy and organization the ory parte d company so many ye ars

ago—this would be beyond the scope of this article and has been brilliantly

done by her anyway. If there is a journey in this article , it is not so much

one of history as of perspective, for as Marcel Proust obse rved, “The real

voyage of discove ry begins not with visiting new place s but in seeing familiar

landscape s with new eyes.”

PUTTING HUMPTY TOGETHER AGAIN

After so many years of separation, the prospect of a possible reconciliation

between OB and anthropology is arousing considerable interest. In the United

States, courses on organizational anthropology have been springing up every-

where, and the number of ethnographic studies of organizations has “grown

dramatically” in recent years (cf. Editors’ introduction to Schwartzman, 1993).

There have also been numerous unconfirmed sightings of anthropologists (ap-

parently quite happily) grubbing around in organizations, even emerging from

1148 Bate

4I am not the only one to consider the prospects of a reunification of the fields of anthropologyand organization studies. See also Rosen (1991) , Czarniawska-Joerges (1992), and most re-

cently Linstead (1997). Significant, but clearly not a critical mass as ye t!

time to time to press the case for “more consulting on organizational culture”(Kogod, 1994) and more of an “anthropological approach to managing organi-

zations” (Jordan, 1994). The “business anthropologist,” it would seem, is now

firmly in residence in corporate America.

As they say, it takes two to tango, and organization researchers, for their

part, have been making the ir own friendly gestures toward anthropology, with

increasingly frequent forays into ethnographic-type methodologie s and lan-

guage . They have a new journal, Studies of Cultures, Organizations and Socie-

ties, which provide s a forum for debate on the culture and symbolism of

everyday life in organizations—ethnographic in intention, if not yet in deed,

and have even begun to suggest the possibility of not just academics but also

practitioners benefiting from a greater “ethnographic consciousne ss” in their

work (Linstead, 1997). One of the more generous gestures in recent times

has been the ir adoption of a 25-ye ar-old anthropology book (The Interpreta-

tion of Cultures) as their bible . So for Gideon now read Geertz.

And yet it is easy to get carried away by all this, to see the summer in

a single swallow. Truth is that there are few signs of a similar ressurgence in

Europe or Scandinavia. With the exception of Watson (1994) , Collinson

(1992) , and Wright (1994)—and I have doubts about whether any but the

middle one strictly qualify—Britain has not seen a field-based organizational

anthropology book since Jaque s (1951) and Turner (1971) . What is surprising

is that it was British anthropologists whose “outstanding ethnographie s” led

the whole field for half a century up to this time (D’Andrade , 1995, p. 5;

Stocking, 1983) . Even in the wider inte rnational context, people accept that

anthropology continue s to remain on the “outskirts” of research on organi-

zations (Schwartzman, 1993, p. 2), and it still has the stigma of be ing labe led

“the forgotte n science” of behavioral studies (Morey & Luthans, 1987) .

And we have after all seen false dawns before. For example , many felt

that when the best selling busine ss writers got hold of “culture ” in the early

1980s (Pascale & Athos, 1981; Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Peters & Waterman,

1982; Kanter, 1983) , OB was in the process of be ing born again as An-

thropology. They were to be disappointe d. While the god was the same,

OB’s concept of culture was very diffe rent (cf. Alvesson, 1993, Chap. 2 for

details of the contrasts), altoge ther more corporeal and profit-drive n than

the sylphen, will-o’-the-wisp character glimpse d in the jungle s of anthro-

pology. The final blow came in the 1990s, with the culture evange lists turn-

ing against their god and benefactor, and spurning him in a remarkable

display of public hypocrisy. The Billy Grahams of busine ss denied him

thrice. Tom Peters, for example , the man who 15 years before had declared

that “culture” was the “essential quality” (1982, p. 75) of excellent compa-

nies, was now saying: “We didn’t know what culture was then, and sure as

hell we don’t know what it is now,” adding for the benefit of those who

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1149

like it in hard figures: “About 90 percent of the training and consulting

money that has been spent on culture change and customer care pro-

grammes has been thrown down the drain” (BBC video, 1995) . As we now

look back on this period, what is perhaps most striking is that all the man-

agement work that went into promoting the culture concept, so far as we

can tell, did nothing to promote the discipline that had invented it.

Even the increase in the number of publications may not be as healthy

as it appears, because now, for the first time, there are probably more peo-

ple writing about organizational ethnography than actually doing it. More-

ove r, it is all too easy to wrongly equate “qualitative ” research (which is

on the increase) with anthropological or ethnographic research (which or-

ganizationally speaking is not). Almost all anthropological research is quali-

tative but the reverse rarely seems to apply in practice . What we have to

be clear about is that ethnographic research is a particular form of quali-

tative research (Wolcott, 1995, p. 82)—self-immersed, longitudinal, reflex-

ive , participant obse rvational, etc.—and it is not be ing practice d in an

organizational context anything like as frequently as people are claiming it

to be . “Quasi-anthropologica l” may be a better word to describe the rather

half-he arted ethnographic studie s that have been emerging in recent years.5

That is to say, there is actually less to “organizational ethnography” than

meets the eye. On closer examination “thick description” invariably turns out

to be “quick description” (Wolcott, 1995, p. 90) , yet anothe r busine ss case

study or company history, a pale reflection of the “experientially rich social

science” envisaged by early writers like Agar (1980, p. 6). “Prolonge d contact

with the fie ld” means a series of flying visits rather than a long-te rm stay

(jet-plane ethnography) . Organization anthropologists rare ly take a tooth-

brush with them these days. A journe y into the organizational bush is often

little more than a safe and close ly chape roned form of anthropological tour-

ism. “Organizational” often turns out to be yet anothe r marginal group: foot-

ball hooligans, Greenham Common prote stors, divorce court personnel,

cocktail waitresses, Olympic organizing committees, funeral directors, girl

scouts, dance companie s, or LA punks; I mean where are the ethnographie s

of the health service , or modern ethnographie s of the shop floor? 6 This may

1150 Bate

5There are some exce ptions here , notably the rich fields of educational anthropology, policingand crime, and me dical and healthcare anthropology (cf. Atkinson, 1981, 1990; Fox, 1992;

Hammersley, 1990; Mouly & Sankaran, 1995; Young, 1991, for exte nsive bibliographies ofthese fields).

6It would be unfair not to mention some important exce ptions to the rule: D. Collinson’s(1992) Managing the shop floor; see also Young’s (1989) and Parke r’s (1995) shorter shopfloor

studies. See also Linstead’s (1985) earlie r ethnographic vigne ttes of workplace sabotage. Fora review of U.S. shop floor and occupational culture studies see Schwartzman (1993, Chap.

4) . Molstad (1986, 1988, 1996) has also done some very interesting ethnographic researchamong industrial brewery workers in Los Angele s which is ve ry re miniscent of Roy and

Burowoy.

sound harsh, but it is drive n by the present author’s frustration with ethno-

graphic pastiche .

The reasons for the above are not hard to find. Anthropology is a haz-

ardous sport. It takes time, it is not journal friendly (“too long”), and it takes

you away from the scene of the action (“When did we last see that bloke ?”).

One full-length publishe d ethnography every 3 years (which is quite good

going) is not like ly to satisfy the “ratings” merchants or one’s head of school;

and sabbaticals that used to permit a full-time period in the field are no

longer available to the majority. In the present climate, Rule 1 for aspiring

organization researchers surely has to be : keep away from organizations;

fie ldwork take s too long! Many are inde ed coming round to this: witness the

recent spate of publications of the “As discusse d by a group of clever friends

over a Danish pastry during a break in the confe rence” or “Overheard in a

Palo Alto bar” varie ty. Since anthropology is a field sport (no fieldwork, no

anthropology), there is not the same range of short cuts that other kinds of

OB research may be able to offer. So perhaps it is a case of “Put up or shut

up,” or at best some kind of mild protest like a T-shirt bearing the words

“Anthropology can seriously damage your career.”

DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethnography can be defined in a varie ty of different ways: as a par-

ticular type of method or fieldwork activity (the “doing” of ethnography) ,

a kind of intellectual effort or paradigm (the “thinking”), and a narrative

or rhetorical style (the “writing”). In all three, there are new ideas that

OB might wish to consider if it were to take an anthropological turn.

Ethnography as Method

Ethnography is about doing fieldwork, an activity that involve s pitching

in and “getting one’s hands dirty” (Hobbs & May, 1993, p. xviii). The broad

methodological challe nge is to “penetrate anothe r form of life” (some feel

to be penetrated by is more accurate), to “capture the richne ss of local

cultural worlds,” and above all to “grasp the native ’s point of view.” A

varie ty of methods may be employe d to this end, including in-depth inter-

viewing, atte nding and recording meetings, docume ntary inve stigation of

records, and participant obse rvation. The latter is the inve ntion of anthro-

pologists and involve s holding the role of “participant ” and “observer,” in-

sider and outside r, in tension so as to ensure that one is close enough to

see what is going on, but not so close as to miss the wood for the trees.

The role has been variously described as the “marginal native ,” “profes-

sional stranger,” “self-re liant loner,” and “detached participant” (cf. Ham-

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1151

mersley, 1990 for a bibliographical overview and critique of ethnographic

method) . We can pass rapidly over this particular conception of ethnogra-

phy, because it is not this that distinguishe s it from the broade r fie ld of

qualitative research. The methods it uses are basically the same, and offer

few new ideas or directions for the field.

If there is any difference , however, it is one of attitude: whereas quali-

tative researchers seem to have an insatiable appetite for “how to” methods

books, e thnographe rs are much less fussy, preferring instead to “suck it

and see,” keeping the ir plans roomy and adaptive , perhaps occasionally of-

fering the odd aphorism or piece of “advice” to would-be researchers—like :

“I sugge st you buy a note book and pencil” (Kroeber to graduate stude nt),

“Get yourse lf a decent hampe r from Fortnum and Mason’s and keep away

from the native women” (Evans-Pritchard), and “Make your will, buy your-

self some shorts with locust-proof pocket flaps, and be sure you have a

good stock of nail varnish for the local dandie s” (Barley)! Obviously, the

desire to preserve some of the mystique of anthropology is a factor in this,

but the main point here (and very un-OB) is that many ethnographe rs be-

lieve there are no rule s as such, and the only way to do ethnography is to

just get out and do it.

Ethnography is not so much method in the madness, as madness in

the method, the reality be ing “four thousand page s of hurrie d fieldnote s

and vast stockpile s of scattered memory” (Geertz, 1995, p. 88) . Hardly a

“method” at all really. However, qualitative researchers and writers might

still do well to conside r this alte rnative , and ask what may be learne d from

it. Robert Merton says somewhere that finding the right question to ask is

more difficult than answering it, and certainly the view of ethnographe rs

is that the place to find the “right question” is not in a textbook but out

in the fie ld, by following your nose . Geertz’s advice after years of doing

fieldwork is simple but powerful: “I learn by going” (Ibid, p. 133) . Perhaps

what qualitative research in general needs at this time are fewer detailed

methods and more broad strategems. If the idea of grounde d research is

so popular, how about the notion of grounde d methodology?

Ethnography as Paradigm

“When all is said and done ,” writes Czarniawska-Joe rges, “anthropol-

ogy might, after all, be seen as a frame of mind” (1992, p. 195) . It is not

so much about doing and technique as about thinking, about looking at

the world and oneself in a particular kind of way; in short a paradigm

(Sanday, 1979) . The core notion is one of culture -as-text, in which the pri-

mary tool of unde rstanding is an interpretive reading of that text (Geertz,

1973; Schne ider, 1987) .

1152 Bate

The key to the ethnographic frame of mind is to learn to “think cul-

turally” about a socie ty or organization, and this, I would argue , reveals

many things that present approache s, especially the “manage mentcentric”one s, are missing: that culture s cannot be “created” by leade rs, that as-

sumptions about “strong culture s” and a consensus of meanings are fatally

flawed, that organizations are not “pyramids” but multicultural milie ux that

have little respect for traditional concepts of hie rarchy and authority, and

many more (Bate, 1994; Parke r, 1995) . Perhaps the greatest contribution

the ethnographic paradigm can make to organization and manage ment

studies is to challe nge the highly influential “KISS” (Keep it simple stupid)

paradigm found in the best-selling busine ss books. Cultural analysis runs

counter to the preference for simplification that is prevale nt in social sci-

ence research (LeVine, 1984); it stubbornly denies the obviousne ss of the

obvious, and it is deeply suspicious about whether common sense is, as the

best selle rs love to tell us, always good sense . In short, it challenges every

pedestal upon which the popular busine ss texts have been constructed, and

to this extent offers manage ment studies a radical perspective, and inde ed

perhaps the radical perspective that the field curre ntly lacks. Central to

ethnography is criticality (Golden-Biddle & Locke , 1993) : the way in which

authors challenge their reade rs to que stion and re-examine the ir taken-for-

granted belie fs. Contrast this with the best-selling business authors who are

always claiming that what they say is so simple , so obvious, and so com-

monsensical that it is beyond que stion.

Ethnography as a Way of Writin g

Ethnography is art, science, and craft rolle d into one. As artists we

seek to capture experiences in images and representations which symbolize

reality; in this regard, expre ssion is more important than precision. As sci-

entists, we are data hunter¯gathe rers who go out and colle ct information,

analyze it, and forge it into testable hypothe ses and theories. And as crafts-

men and women we are writers who write ; issues of style and a pride in

good writing are paramount, not because of any misplace d lite rary ambi-

tion, but because the very materials of theory making are words, phrase s,

and sentences. Forms of theory and forms of discourse are inseparable . Or

as Van Maane n puts it: “Theory is a matter of words not worlds; of maps

not territorie s; or representations not realitie s” (1995b, p. 134) .

With regard to the last point, a lot of OB writing is just plain bad!

This is not surprising in a discipline where writing is seen as a secondary

or mop-up activity. Ethnography, on the other hand, puts lite rary qualitie s

and ambitions back on the age nda, take s the textuality of theories more

seriously, explore s the terra incognita of lite rary practices (ibid) , and begins

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1153

to think of the author as a performer within the theatre of language . As

the comic says, it really is “how you tell ’em”—how you recount your field-

work, your narrative style—that determines whether people smile, are en-

gage d or persuaded by what they hear. “Proof,” “truth,” “validity” are as

much an issue of style as of content.

OB, as ethnography, has to be considered as performance , as a form

of intertextual and polyvocal representation, as a discipline whose theories

and concepts are as much created by the writing as by the reality itself,

that creates and constitute s the reality of organizations as much as it cap-

tures it. Of course, not all anthropology is good writing; it is the commit-

me nt to it that is important. That commitment must also stre tch to

experimentation with diffe rent styles. This again is where OB might gain

from taking a look at ethnography, since in recent years there has been

an explosion of style s, and a richne ss and varie ty that perhaps no other

social science can match: fictional, poe tic, critical, co-constructe d, multicul-

tural, feminist, autobiographical, and postmode rn. The influe nce of post-

structuralism and deconstructionism has been particularly marke d, the ir

main role being to unde rmine the distinctions between diffe rent genres of

writing: between those of “writers” and critics, between fiction and nonfic-

tion, indeed between lite rary and technical writing generally (Clifford, 1988;

Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995, p. 14) .

What ethnography offers OB is the prospect of casting off some of

the bonds of realism and positivism in which it has been wrapped for so

long, of expanding the realms of scientific discourse into literary discourse .

This is Paul Atkinson’s (1990) concept of the “ethnographic imagination,”which approache s social research and writing almost in the manne r of the

lite rary critic, and puts the exciting idea of “a poe tics of organizations”firmly onto the age nda. The process may already be quite advance d in some

quarters: Rose (1990) , for example , suggests that the nove l is invading and

transforming the scientific monograph, not through the use of fiction par-

ticularly, but through the descriptive setting of the scene, the narration of

the local people ’s own storie s, the use of dialogue , and the notation by the

author of emotions, subje ctive reactions, and involve ment in ongoing ac-

tivitie s. Watson (1995) claims this is an exagge ration, but, farfe tched or not,

it cannot be ignored. OB must not get left behind.

THE TEXTURE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Another way to look at the contrasts between anthropology and OB

is in terms of broad texture and weave . However, any generalization here

will need to be made with some caution, since anthropology is a coat of

many colors, and prides itself upon its rich mix of the traditional with the

1154 Bate

avant-garde , and the middle of the road with the faddish—even at times

outlandish. It also embraces a wealth of diffe rent style s: ethnographic re-

alism, confe ssional ethnography, dramatic ethnography, critical ethnogra-

phy, self- or auto-e thnography, sociopoe tics, reflexive ethnography, and

many more (Ellis & Bochne r, 1996; Van Maanen, 1995a) .

In his book, The Awakenin g G iant, Pettigre w attacks research on or-

ganization theory and behavior for be ing ahistorical , aconte xtual, and

aprocessual in its approach and outlook (1985, p. xix, Chap. 2; repeated

1995, p. 93) . He is probably right on all three counts. Anthropology, on

the othe r hand, is very much the opposite in each of these respects, and

to this extent presents manage ment research with some real alternative s

for future development.

Historical

Manage ment sciences do not on the whole tend to be historicall y-

minded, hence the ir preference for forward-looking concepts such as “vi-

sion,” “forecast,” “plan,” and so on. Anthropology puts the past back on to

the age nda, giving it the weight conve ntional organizational and manageme nt

mode ls lack (Bate, 1994). The reason is that the present (and future ) only

becomes meaningful when it is set in the context of its past—remember Rabi-

now’s observation (cited in Linstead, 1997, p. 90) that thought is “nothing

more and nothing less than a historically locatable set of practices.”The anthropologists ’ interest is not in the past as such, but in the “liv-

ing history” (Malinowski, 1945) of the society or organization, the ways of

thinking and behavior that continue to “live on” in, and mould and shape ,

the present—in othe r words, culture . An example of this would be the

“isms” or cultural schema that I found in my own 4-year study of British

Rail. These “habits of thought,” many of them more than a century old

but still very much alive and kicking in the organization, were playing havoc

with its day-to-day manage ment processes. It was these mentalitie s that lay

behind the decline and stagnation of the organization (Bate , 1990) . Other

research conducte d in manufacturing companie s revealed similar debilitat-

ing cultural hangove rs from the past (Bate, 1984) .

A re cent example of good historical conte xtualization is Georgina

Born’s (1995) ethnography of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coor-

dination Acoustique /Musique ), Pierre Boulez’s compute r music research

and production institute in Paris, which skillfully (and at great length!) re-

veals how long-standing contradictions between modernism and postmod-

ernism in music, mediated by Boulez up until his retirement in 1992 and

subse quently by his successors, found constant expression in IRCAM’s “liv-

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1155

ing” culture and the everyday processes through which meanings were ne-

gotiate d and renegotiate d by the members.

History should not actually be studied historically, however. It is in the

everyday that the anthropologist searches for the past, in such things as rites

and rituals, myths, storie s and sagas, ballads, and ane cdote s. This kind of

activity is one which a small number of organization writers have picked up

on, albe it at times tediously deconstructive ly (Boje , 1995; Boje et al., 1982;

Martin, 1982; Tommerup & Loubier, 1996; Trice & Beyer, 1991; Young, 1989;

the latter be ing an interesting analysis of the significance to a group of shop

floor “girls” in a Northern British rainwear factory of wearing a St. George’sDay lape l rose). The function of such myths and rituals has been to bring the

past forward, and ensure its continue d contemporary relevance .

Contextual

One of the root notions of anthropology is that thought and behavior

cannot be properly understood outside the context in which they are situ-

ated; it is knowledge of context that renders them intelligible . “Context”here can refer to temporal (Gell, 1992) , physical, or institutional context

(Dennis, Henriques, & Slaughte r, 1956) . For example , a recent ethnography

of a hospital conducte d by my colle agues and myse lf (Bate et al., 1997)

revealed how the proble ms of the hospital—weake sses in the top team,

failings in the clinical directorate structure , low morale , stress, IT problems,

and poor relationships between the manage ment and senior clinicians—far

from being exclusive ly “local” (as many believed), were the result of the

complex interplay of different organizational, professional, Trust, NHS, and

political contexts within which they were embedded. A different conception

of context in health care is found in Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) study of

the “awareness contexts” of dying, which ranged from departments where

patie nts’ aware ness of death was high (cancer wards) to those where it was

low to nonexiste nt (premature baby service and neurology) .

One of the strengths of anthropology is that it involve s putting the indi-

vidual back in his social setting, back into the contexts in which the action

takes place, and observing him in his daily activities. By establishing links be-

tween the “individual” and the “social,” the micro and the macro, it reaches,

or at least claims that it can reach, parts other discipline s cannot reach:

O ur theory is our strength. Manage me nt the ory is drive n by sociology and

psychology and has difficulty bridging the gap between the macro and micro levels

of behaviour. We have the ability to bridge that gap. We can see patterns. We see

ways to understand the behaviour of the individuals as part of the pattern of

behaviour as a whole. (Jordan, 1994, p. 9)

1156 Bate

It is neverthe less becoming abundantly clear as time goe s on that anthro-

pologists are coming under increasing pressure to radically revise their con-

cept of “wholes” and “contexts” to take account of the postmodern age

and the growth and emergence of the new globally-e ngage d, postindustrial

organization. As Hatch and Schultz explain:

Studying culture in a postindustrial context demands that we leave behind the notionof isolated, socialized, organizational tribes. In postindustrial times, tribes become

fragmented, their cohere nce shattered and replaced by multiplicity and the pluralism

of meaning and interpretation. In this framing of culture, meaning is carried by

texts rather than tribes and these texts trave l through electronic space where they

are ope n to nume rous readings by limitless anonym ous interpre ters whose

interpretations produce other texts in an endless and open-ended herme neutic.

(1995, pp. 2¯3)

People are saying it is time for anthropologists to stop seeing wholes

that are not there, to check out of the “Grand Hotel” (Collins, 1989) , where

everything was, as it were, unde r the one roof, and to embrace virtual con-

texts and the concept of organizations in hyperspace . It is time, they say,

to stop talking about “in the round” and to replace it with a concept of

the great wide open, not so much holistic as boundaryle ss and infinite .

This is part of a wider trend in anthropology, in which the earlier em-

phasis on stability, whole ness, harmony, and continuity (the “unified cor-

pus”) is increasingly giving way to the concept of culture as contested,

fragmented, temporal, and emergent (Clifford, 1986, p. 19) ; as a loose ly-

couple d, pluralistic system, consisting of a multiplicity of human commu-

nities, of a mix of similarity and diffe rence, conve rgence and divergence

(Bate, 1994, p. 71; Geertz, 1984; Paul, Mille r, & Paul, 1994) . “Corporate

culture ” writers need to take note: the ir concept of culture is, and always

has been, very different from that of the anthropologist, with much more

emphasis on similarity, conve rgence, sharedne ss, and normative consensus

(Parker, 1995). As Parker showed, in one of the few organization studies

on this issue (a medium-sized manufacturin g company called “Vulcan”),

these writers have got it seriously wrong. Even a single occupational culture

within an organization, in this case the manage ment culture , is charac-

terized by fragmentation of outlook and perspective, a feeling of “family,”yet at other times a feeling of “nonfamily.” Young’s study (1989) is anothe r

example , similar in many ways to Parke r’s.

This debate and the attempt to reconceptualize and redefine “context”is part of an even bigger issue of devising new systems of discourse in an-

thropology (a challe nge that must apply equally to organization studies)

that can keep up, more or less, with what is going on in the world “out

there.” Geertz is far from clear what these may be, but is convince d (as I

am) that they will have to be more ad hoc and imperfect than anything

we have seen before:

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1157

One works ad hoc and ad interim , piecing together thousand-year histories with

three -week massacr e s, inte rnational conflicts with municipal e cologie s. Theeconomics of rice or olives, the politics of ethnicity or religion, the workings of

language or war, must, to some extent, be soldered into the final construction . .. . The result, inevitably, is unsatisfactory, lumbering, shaky, and badly formed: a

grand contraption. (Geertz, 1995, p. 20)

The other thing Geertz is sure about is that anthropology will have to be-

come even more process-oriented than it has been in the past, and it is to

this issue that we now turn.

Processual

Organizations are “formal” in the sense of having explicit tasks to accomplish and

“informal” in the sense of the way membe rs continually negotiate with one another

in the interpretation and carrying out of such tasks. The promise of ethnographyis the presentation of the work culture that emerges from the interplay between

these so-called formal and informal aspe cts of organizational life. (Van Maane n etal., in Schwartzman, 1993, p. vii)

While be ing careful to maintain this dual emphasis, anthropology’smain contribution lies on the informal side of the equation. This is not

surprising: anthropology did after all invent the concept of the “informal

system” and the informal organization. Hawthorne and the Bank Wiring

Observation Room was about informality and informal relationships, as was

Roy’s (1952, 1954, 1959) , and 30 years later, Burowoy’s (1979) classic re-

search in a Chicago machine shop (quota restrictions, goldbricking) . In

similar ve in was Melville Dalton’s (1959) participant obse rver study of “the

schisms and ties between official and unofficial action” among managers

in four companie s.

Studying the informal process is very much a que stion of focusing on

the “contested terrain” upon which diffe rent subculture s or native vie w

paradigms (Gregory, 1983) fight it out and establish the terms of the ir frag-

ile coexistence. Gouldne r (1954) coined the term “indulge ncy patte rn” to

describe the informal, and always taut and dynamic, give -and-take system

between manage ment and worker which functione d as a cushion or lubri-

cant to the relationship. This involve d managers refraining from enforcing

“obe dience obligations ” in return for worke r cooperation, for example,

waiving the formal rule to allow workers to borrow company tools and

equipment, which extended to letting them take dynamite home for use

when they went fishing in the local lake . Very effective !

It was Gouldne r and Burowoy’s studies that first drew attention to the

wide range of “games” workers played, by no means all of them hostile to

manage ment inte rests. In fact, the interesting dynamic was that of collu sion

between manage rs and workers in the mainte nance of the game—workers

played games with manage ment not always against it; playing the game es-

1158 Bate

tablishe d a common inte rest. Industrial relations was therefore not just

about conflict, it was also about subtle forms of collaboration, in which

terms of inte rdepende nce were agreed between the parties on the basis of

agre ed informal rule s. (See also Morey & Luthans, 1991, in this journal,

for a discussion of dyadic alliance s in informal organizations.) The game

was always unstable , with each side always pushing for that little bit more.

The anthropologists ’ view of culture is therefore diffe rent again, alto-

gether more dynamic than that of the “corporate culture” writers in man-

age ment and organization studies. As we have alre ady said, culture , to

them, is not the static or fixed entity conce ived by the latte r (and given

away by their constant reference to “the” culture of the organization) , but

a process—essentially a political process—in which existing meanings are

constantly being conte sted in rough-and-tumble fashion, renegotiate d, and

redefined by the partie s (Wolf, 1982, p. 387) . The task is to track, describe ,

and explain that process.

There is therefore a good deal more to “process” than studying infor-

mality, in fact it suggests a wholly different outlook on organization, one

which is wider and which picks up the social, non job-re late d aspe cts of

organizational life :

The jumping off point for this [ informal, expressive ] approach is the mundane

observation that more things are going on in organizations than ge tting the job

done. People do ge t the job done ... but people in organizations also gossip, joke,

knife one another, initiate romantic involvements, cue new employees on ways of

doing the least amount of work that still avoids hassles from a supervisor, talk sports

and arrange picnics. Now it seems to us quite a presumption that work activities

should have some kind of ascendant hold on our attention, whereas picnic arranging

should not. (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1982, pp. 116-117)

It has to be said that OB is still a long way off giving picnics the weight

the y de se rve ! It also ne eds ge ne rally to ge t be tte r at unde rstanding

“change ,” not as a single line or “parade that can be watched as it passes”(Geertz, 1995, p. 4), but as “swirls, confluxions, and inconstant conne ctions;

clouds colle cting, clouds dispersing . . . larger and smalle r streams, twisting

and turning and now and then crossing, running together, separating again”(p. 2). Anything, in fact, that capture s the “conne ctedne ss” of things that

happe n. Clearly the traditional concept of “informality, ” and the interplay

of formal and informal, does not have all the answe rs to change , but it

doe s have some of them.

Anthropology diffe rs fundame ntally from OB in one more important

respect not allude d to in Pettigre w’s phrase , namely that it is “actor-cen-

tered,” inside r-out rathe r than outside r-in in its approach. Arguably, this

is an are a that offers OB the greatest scope for moving in some new

dire ctions.

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1159

Actor-Centered

Anthropology ’s central task is representing the lives of othe rs, and in

particular conve ying a “flavor” of what it looks and feels like from the

“native ’s point of view” (Malinowski, 1922)—“What is it like to work

here? ” “Why is it this way? ” “What happe ns, or does not happe n, because

of this? ” (Jones, Moore , & Snyde r, 1988, p. 45) are the que stions from

which one pieces together “how participants made sense of it themselve s”(Gre gory, 1983, p. 366) . Although a number of disciplin es have since

adopte d the “actor-centered” approach, it should not be forgotte n that it

was anthropology that first invented it. The new infle ction it put on re-

search was subtle but profound: “Instead of asking, ‘What do I see these

people doing? ’ we must ask, ‘What do these people see themselves doing? ’”(Spradle y & McCurdy, 1972, p. 9) . And also extremely challenging. For

what is obvious and “commonse nse” to the native s often pre sents itse lf

defiantly as “no sense” or “nonsense” to the researcher: “The anthropolo-

gist’s problem is to discover how othe r people create order out of what

appe ars to him to be utte r chaos” (Tyle r, 1969 quote d in Spradle y &

McCurdy) . Some prefer to regard “actor-centered” as an ambition rather

than something actually attainable —a quest, even an heroic gesture . After

all, the cautionarie s argue , we may get close to the native ’s point of view

but ultimate ly we have to reconstruct it through our own frame of refer-

ence . The story will never be a telling but a retelling, never a transcription

but a translation. There really is no such thing as “insider out,” only an

ambition to get close r to the native s, and a commitment to learn ing some-

thing about the ir world and what they make of it all.

There are othe r reasons for the shortage of genuine ly actor-centered

studie s available . Nigel Barle y, “The Innoce nt Anthropologist,” jokingly

(but part-truthfully) informs us that most anthropologists do not go out on

fieldwork to hear about other people ’s problems—perish the thought—but

more often to find a way of working through their own personal problems,

be they a broke n marriage or a lack of promotion back home. “Fieldwork

will give you something else to worry about,” he counse ls. Remember also,

he adds, that many never accepted this part of the ir credo in the first place ,

always believing that they had a faculty of shrewd insight far supe rior to

that of the “native s” themselve s! (1989, p. 9).

Another problem is that today, in the overstudie d world of organiza-

tions, it is actually quite difficult to find a “real” native among the swirling

hoards of cosmopolitans and intellectual half-casts (part-time MBAs, Open

University stude nts, etc.), as I found to my cost when I was doing my doc-

toral research in the London docks. Being close to so many universities,

the docks were always teeming with researchers, all fighting among them-

selve s for a small clearing in the jungle in which to complete the ir 10-month

1160 Bate

fieldwork “sentence.” After chasing around the docks like a madman for

several weeks I finally got my first “volunte er.” He sat down in the caravan

(which served as the stewards’ office ) and I produced my questionnaire .

He looke d down at it, and then up at me: “Christ, not Herzberg again, is

it? ” After that I had difficulty be lieving there was any such thing as the

“native ’s point of view.”If there are all these difficultie s, the question must be asked, why

bother? The answe r can only be found by reading those ethnographie s that

have actually succee ded in breaking through into the native s’ world:

Gamst’s (1980) study of “hogge rs,” in which he uses his 6.5 years of railroad

engine service employme nt to develop an ethnography of the rail world,

from the perspective of the engine man on the Central City and Urbana

railroad; Kathle en Gregory’s (1983) inve stigation into the “native view

paradigms” of computer technical profe ssionals in Silicon Valley computer

companie s; and Christine McCourt Perring’s (1994) ethnography of mental

patie nts moving from hospital into the community (cited late r). The words

“rich” and “real-life ” come to mind, but there is more to it than this. In

so many of these studie s there is a powerful and exciting sense of genuine

and often surprising discovery, of a way of life , paradigm or world view

that the outside r-centered approach would surely have missed. Such studies

lend support to my own personal aphorism that “insight always comes from

the inside .”Although most manage ment and organizational research is qualitative ,

very little of it is in fact anthropologically actor-centered. Harvard-type case

studies abound, indeed are the preferred form for research and teaching,

but only a small proportion of them set out to tell the story “from the

inside ,” as it is live d by those who live it.

An obvious advantage of actor-centered research is that it reduces the

risk of your getting it wrong, of mistaking or substituting your own mean-

ings for those of the people actually involve d. We know how easy it is to

do this. Take Jean-Pie rre Brun’s wonderful study (1995) of the linemen of

Que bec. These are the people who daily ope rate many feet above the

ground on high voltage cable s carrying anything between 120 and 34,500

volts. The appare nt image to the outside r is of a group of high-wire , macho

dare devils flagrantly taking risks with their own lives:

They do not bother to install all the protective device s required by safety standards,

and some electrified equipment remains exposed and unprotected . . . . Practices

such as these contrave ne the safety code and are condemned by manage ment, which

accuse s employees of being reckless, incompetent and offhand in the face of danger.

(p. 7)

However, the reality viewed through the eyes of the linemen could

not have been more different:

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1161

They explained that cove ring every possible risk of accidental contact is not the

best solution. The working environment become s too cluttered and cramped; the

number of actions, ge stures and movements increase s tenfold, which lengthens

production time and cre ates an added risk of accidental contact when the protective

devices are being installed or remove d . . . . “If you’re too protected, you end up

not seeing what you’re doing. It’s like wearing three pairs of safety goggle s because

the thing might explode! In fact, it’s worse, because with three pairs of goggle s you

can’t see at all and so the thing will almost certainly explode !” [ lineman] . (p. 8)

What is inte resting here is not just the behavioral split between the

formal system and the informal system (see earlie r), but the separation at

a deeper cognitive and cultural level of the “expert theory” from the “folk

theory.” This fundame ntal distinction has come to form the backbone of

the relative ly new fie ld of “cognitive anthropology” (cf. Bate , 1997; D’An-

drade , 1995; Holland & Quinn, 1987) , but it does not, however, appe ar in

any frameworks of OB theory, not even organizational cognition. This is a

pity, since not only is this research beginning to reveal many new things

about the relationship between mind, culture , and action, it is also getting

to grips with the most important theory of all: the theory that drive s eve-

ryday behavior, the mundane theory, the “theory in use” that we still know

precious little about.

And what of the future generally for the concepts of “actor-centered”and “representation? ” In a recent television interview, Michae l Buerk, the

BBC re porte r who first broke the news of the Ethiopian famine to a

shocked world some 15 years ago, was aske d what he thought would be

the differences if that same event were reporte d today. He replied that the

native s would, indeed must, be given much greater opportunity to speak

for themselves, inste ad of having to stand there pathe tically, as a sile nt

backdrop to the ir own trage dy. Just as he felt increasing unease with all

forms of mediate d representation, so too are anthropologists having similar

feelings. As Geertz has so eloquently put it, “Depiction is power. The rep-

resentation of others is not easily separable from the manipulation of them”(1995, p. 130) .

Anthropology carries the taint of what Deleuze has called “the indig-

nity of speaking for others” (cited in Khan, 1996, p. 3), and although this

may be a bit extreme, most people now accept that the text “can no longer

speak with an unque stione d and automatic authority for an “other” defined

as unable to speak for itse lf” (ibid) . The search in future must therefore

be for more “direct to camera” ways of getting at the native ’s point of

view, more native anthropology for example (Bernard & Pedraza, 1989) ,

more in-culture researchers, and more equivale nts of the “home movie .”Social scientists must begin to think about substituting “delegation” for

“representation,” and abandoning at least some of the excesses of ventrilo-

quism and the cursed autocue .

1162 Bate

THE QUALITIES OF GOOD ETHNOGRAPHY

I should now like to focus on what I see as the distinctive “qualitie s”of ethnographic research, those that might conce ivably add to organization

research if they were to be more wide ly adopte d.

The “Being There” Quality

Good ethnography is about communicating the impression of having

truly “bee n the re,” of having had “close -in contact with far-out live s”(Geertz, 1988, p. 6), while at the same time making the reader feel he or

she has been there too.7 We can feel it, taste it, smell it. It is “experience-

near” (Geertz, 1984) . Like all art it has an expressive quality, such as one

finds in a poem by Lorca or Wilfre d Owen, a piece of simple prose by

Azorin, an exotic nove l by Ben Okri (The Famished Road being a good

example of the blurring of the real and imaginary one now finds in post-

modern ethnography) , a piece of trave l writing by Gerald Brenan, Henry

Swinburne , or Somerset Maugham.

“Being there” is about conveying qualitie s of intense familiarity with

the subjects and the ir ways, of “knowing,” of having a “street cred” of which

even the native s themselve s would approve . The successful account drips

with authe nticity and plausibility (Golden-Biddle & Locke, 1993), and it

leaves one in no doubt that one is getting it straight and in the raw as the

result of the authors’ lengthy personal contact with the people they are

writing about. In the very best of ethnographic accounts, the text becomes

a window rathe r than a page .

It is art that has the monopoly of the being-the re quality, not anthro-

pology, and as in art the “truth-value ” of the text is more important than

its “fact-value .” As an account it is not “good” because it has discovered

the “facts,” but because it has succeeded in creating its own truth: it has

expre ssive powe r regardle ss of its factual accuracy, and “stands” inde-

pendently of its factual content. As Geertz (1984, p. 10) states, to be moved

by someone like Macbeth, you do not have to ask whether there really was

a man like that. Some things move us whether or not they are actually

real. The created illusion substitute s for, ultimate ly becomes more powerful

than, reality itself (Bate, 1994, p. 248) . No wonder scientists get uncom-

fortable with anthropology! And so they should: anthropology was, after

all, born out of the “romantic rebe llion” against science (Schweder, 1984) ,

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1163

7As Hobbs and May (1993, p. ix) observe we may in fact be talking about two qualities not

one, namely “being there” and “being here”: the author is able to write the report becausehe has been “there ;” we are able to read it because he is “here .” To be an ethnographer is

to be in two places at the same time.

and the conviction that one could “know” the world through things other

than evide nce and reason, most notably the senses and the imagination.

However, for lesser mortals, the best guide to “being there” is still the

photograp her’s aphorism , “If you’re not good enough, you’re not close

enough.” For example , only a really close-in anthropologist would know that

you can tell the plainclothe s “undercover” police from the thousands of or-

dinary football fans by the fact that they wear ear-muffs with collars up to

conceal the ear-pie ces and radio wire (Armstrong, 1993, p. 4). Now that is

close up, so close in fact that there is something approaching complete re-

moval of the “me-anthropologist¯you-native ” framework, and a major blur-

ring of roles. Thus, John Van Maanen (1988) becomes, for a time at least, a

“sort of police officer” with the Los Ange les Police Department, and Arm-

strong (1993) a “sort of football hooligan” with She ffield United supporte rs.

As to the reade rs, we are also “sort of” there with them, in the thick of it,

in the back seat of a police car, or running wild with the mob.

Some of my favorite “being there’s” range from the tragic to the comic:

Nicky James’s (1993) moving account of the exquisite emotional control of

a young cancer patient and his family; our own “boy scientists” encounte r

with Big Harold in the “So I like being a monke y” incident in a chemical

plant (Bate & Mangham, 1981, pp. 20-21) ; the frightening journey into the

“heart of darkne ss” of a London police station (Chesshyre , 1989) ; Nige l

Barley’s “bleeding chunks of raw reality” as he encounte rs malaria, drunken

missionarie s and chiefs, devious informants, and problems with the lan-

guage of the Dowayos of Cameroon (“Excuse me,” I said, “I am cooking

some meat.” At least that was what I had intended to say; owing to tonal

error I declared to an astonishe d audience , “Excuse me. I am copulating

with the blacksmith” (1986, p. 57) , but (talking of bleeding chunks of raw

reality) thankfully he missed the circumcision ceremony (1987); Kunda’screepy account of Dave Carpe nter’s presentation “Tech’s Strategy for the

Nineties” (1992, pp. 95-106) ; and Tracy Kidde r’s (1982) gripping story of

the making of the 32-bit mini-compute r Eagle (his Prologue offers a dra-

matic sampler), brilliantly summed up by Playboy as having been written

with “a reporter’s eye , a nove list’s heart and a technician’s understanding.”Perhaps that is the secret to Being There—and the reason why there are

so few works that succeed in capturing this glittering, but elusive , quality.

Mundaneity and Everydayness

Detail, meticulous detail. (Gardner & Moore, 1964, p. 96)

Anthropology is about the everyday experience of a society or organi-

zation, the everyday things that people get up to in the course of the ir

everyday live s. If OB ever needed a model for a “phe nomenology of or-

1164 Bate

ganizations ” this would sure ly be it, because the whole thrust of anthro-

pology is towards accessing “mundane systems of reason and behaviour”(Pollne r, 1987) , and “penetrating the intimacy of life” (Latour & Woolgar,

1979, p. 17) .

But why would anyone want to get “intimate ” in this way? The first

answer is that there is no other way to study “process” and change :

. . . it is precisely at this leve l of the eve ryday, at the level of the detailed social

processes informing relationships between organizational interests, that the content

of organ izational culture is continuously formed and re affirmed . . . . The

mundane ity of the everyday is an illusion, for it is within these details that the

dynamics of organizational culture come into being and use. (Young, 1989, p. 201)

The second answer is that it produce s a quality in a research account

that no other method gives, and provide s a unique way of illustrating and

explaining theoretical issues in everyday, expe riential terms. See, for example ,

Putnam and Mumby’s (1993) account of the real-life stresses of having to

work in and follow the “emotional rules” of a strong culture organization.

The quality in question is not easy to define, but has something to do

with telling it like it is, unre constructed, and naturalistically. Material that

would othe rwise end up as out-take s on the cutting room floor is retained,

so as to “ground” the study, and give it vérité or verisimilitude . For exam-

ple, Dubinskas’s (1988) book of readings on high-te chnology organizations

is bursting with detail about particle accelerators, “switchyards ” and detec-

tors, polarize d electron beam sources, and specialize d machines and proc-

esses. There is a meticulous attention to detail: there are maps, diagrams,

and minute-by-minute “activity charts.”But to what e nd? The answer is to reveal things we did not know

already, that surprise , even stun us. On the “mild surprise” end of the scale

is the reve lation that scientific laboratorie s are not at all like most of us

imagine them to be. Even in high risk environme nts, like a particle acce l-

erator laboratory, life is conducted in a relaxed, even sloppy way, much as

one might find in any old run-down manufacturing plant producing fertil-

izers or blotting pape r. For e xample , after reading Traweek’s (1988, pp.

46-47) description of the research yard at SLAC, one is unlike ly ever again

to see science in terms of little men in white coats silently working in sterile

“white” environme nts.

Even more surprising discoveries come when we dig deeper into the

everyday life of the scientist. Mundane naturalistic research has revealed

that “scientific method” is large ly a myth! The processes through which

scientists build the factity of their “real” world are in the fundamentals no

diffe rent from anyone else’s. I am drawing here on the seminal, 2-year study

by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1979) in the Roger Guille min labo-

ratory at the Salk Institute , in which they examine d the everyday scientific

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1165

work involve d in establishing a “fact.” What they found was that “fact”was constructed from talk, and that is basically what scientists did all day:

they talked. (The “doing” of science was le ft to the technicians.) From the ir

analysis of the microprocesses in laboratory conversations and everyday ac-

tivitie s the authors showed that hard data, pure ly scientific and technical

conside rations, and objectivity were only part of the story of scientific dis-

covery—and the winning of Nobe l prize s! The remainder was provide d by

a kind of “social” knowledge and subje ctivity one would have thought un-

acceptable to science.

Other personal favorite s of mine that capture the mundane quality of

organizational life are Gary Fine’s (1988) study of the daily ups and downs

of kitche n restaurant workers, and Ste phe n Barley’s (1983) study of the

everyday lives (and deaths! ) of funeral directors.

Polyphony and Rich Description

Polyphony is all the talk in anthropology at the moment (though sadly

once again we find a lot more talk than action in the organizational arena) .

And if not polyphony then “multivocality ” (Martin, 1992, 1995) , “polyvo-

cality” (Clifford, 1986, p. 104) , and “the plurality of subje ctivitie s” (Collin-

son, 1992, p. 44) , all very similar so far as one can tell, and all re lating

back to the linguistic and rhetorical version of social constructionism found

in the “dialogical” work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Volosinov (Clifford, 1983,

1986; Shotter, 1993, p. 14) . So what is this magic ingre dient? At a simple

leve l, polyphony is about “people speaking for themselves” (Kanter, 1977,

p. 5)—the polyphony, though more usually cacophony, of voices. It is a

method of representation, usually captured in some way by extensive ver-

batim quotation and close scripting and reportage of everyday events. At a

more complex leve l it concerns the whole nature of the relationship be-

tween author and text (author-ity) , and suggests a rhetorical or writing strat-

egy (scrapbook, collage ) for establishing authorial presence and textual

authority.

Interest in polyphony has partly come about as the result of ethnog-

raphe rs’ growing conce rn about speaking for others (see Michae l Buerk

earlie r), and the desire to find some way round this:

The developing “critical turn” within the discipline has thrown into question the

assumption that the ethnographer can “translate” or converge upon the reality of

her subjects . . . . The ethnographic account is seen instead as a mediation of voices

through the text: a translation that does not translate. And having re jected the idea

of “speaking for,” the issue instead becomes one of polyphony, of voices in the

text, of deve loping “a cultural poetics that is an interplay of voices and positioned

utterances” (Clifford, 1986) , a writing that is driven by the recognition, rather than

the suppression or integration, of otherness and difference. (Khan, 1996, p. 3)

1166 Bate

Polyphony is ideally suited to organizations, which are by the ir very

nature pluralistic and multivocal, and made up of a rich diversity of inter-

se cting diale cts, idioms and profe ssional jargons (the “heteroglossia”).

Theirs is a world riven by multiculturality and destructive tribalism, paradox

and contradiction, competing values and contests of meaning (Alvesson &

Sandkull, 1988; Bate et al., 1997; Darmer, 1991; Dent, 1990; Duenas, 1991;

Quinn & McGrath, 1985; Young, 1989) . What better way, then, of capturing

this quality than through the medium of the polyphonic nove l:

The polyphonic nove l is . . . a carnivalesque are na of diversity . . . a utopian textual

space where discursive complexity, the dialogical interplay of voice s, can be

accommo dated. In the nove ls of Dostoye vsky or Dickens he [Clifford] values

precisely their resistance to totality, and his ideal novelist is a ve ntriloquist—in

nineteenth-century parlance a “polyphonist. ” “He do the police in different voice s,”a listener exclaims admiringly of the boy Sloppy, who reads publicly from the

newspaper in Our Mutual Friend. (Rabinow, 1986, pp. 246-247, summarizing the

views of James Clifford)

Hence, we have “Sloppy” Kanter (1977) doing the men and women

of the corporation in different voices, as we have “Sloppy” Martin (1992)

doing the voice s of OZCO employees in “a rather unbeautiful mosaic of

quotations” (1995, p. 231) , and all jolly good stuff, too. What both studies

unde rline , however, is the fact that “lots of quotations” and enormous

chunks of organizational reality, neat, are not the be all and end all of

polyphonic ethnography. The main issue is where the author chooses to

position himself or herself in re lation to the actors, text, and audience.

Czarniawska-Joe rges (1992) is in no doubt that this is where Kanter’s work

(and I would add a lot of qualitative work in general) falls down:

The book is constituted like a television programme with Kanter as hostess, givingair now to the “people of the corporation,” then to the researche rs. There is nothing

wrong with this kind of formula, in fact, it is ve ry popular and highly legitimate.

Still, it goes against the feeling of “how the life is over there” produced by thick

description; it is a projection of slides rather than a film. (p. 101)

“Hostess” is clearly not polyphonist: polyphonist is back room boy not

principal actor, orchestrator not conductor. The quality of polyphony is

achie ved by actually weake ning the author role , by standing back, and

spreading authorship around (Martin, 1995, p. 231) .

The next step is taking the “middle man,” the author, out completely.

This is virtually what we did in our ethnography of a pharmaceuticals com-

pany (Bate & Mangham, 1981), where for a lot of the time we left it to

real life and the native s to “speak it” for themselve s. Se e in particular

Chapte r 7: the dreaded microwave affair!

This must be done carefully, however, as there are limits to which

authorship can be abandone d to “free market” polyphony (note how a lot of

modern music has lost touch with the listener). The fact is that data doe s not

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1167

always speak for itse lf. Anything does not go. Reality in the raw can be a

pretty formless and meaningle ss thing: there will always be the need for an

inte rlocutor, someone prepared to take on the job of constructing the rough

assemblage into what Frank Kermode (1967) has calle d “fictions of relation,”the process whereby puzzling events are woven into a broader fabric that

makes sense of them as some kind of whole . There is a need to steer some

kind of middle ground between overstaging it and copping out entirely.

What is certain, however, is that polyphony will take on a much wider,

more experimental form in the future , as postmodernists press for more

intertextual practice in anthropology and attempt to transce nd the limita-

tions of any one kind of discourse . For example , whereas in the past it has

been limited to real people and real situations, polyphony will involve more

juxtaposition of real and fictitious events, such as in Fox’s (1995) work,

where a “real” fie ldwork study of an orthope dic surgical event was com-

bined with Douglas’s narrative fiction Bleeders Come First, in orde r to evoke

aspects of the experience that might have been missed if only the “true”event had been recounted. (The fictional patient had a cardiac arrest on

the ope rating table , whereas Fox’s did not.) A polyphony of the real and

the imaginary actually serves to enhance the “realness” of the real—the

blood, the smells, and the trage dy of individual cases that sometimes go

badly. Anthropologists are also beginning to move in anothe r direction,

from looking at the polyphony between people to the polyphony within peo-

ple, their fragme nted cognitions and divergent schema, and the ongoing

inner struggle s between the ir various multiple se lves (Strauss & Quinn,

forthcoming 1997) . Wherever it ends up, polyphony seems destined to be-

come more polyphonic in the future!

A Point and a Punch Line

And so we come to the message in the bottle , that something that

makes one feel the long journe y and the discomfort were really worth it.

The point about anthropology is it is not just storyte lling—we should leave

that to the profe ssional storytelle rs—nor is it just a travalogue of what I

saw and did—that is the job of the trave l writer. Escapism and entertain-

ment may come into it, but the best ethnographie s must offer something

more , be it a theory, mode l, or form of insight, what Langer (1953, p. 50)

refers to as a “a new sort of truth,” a reframing in today’s parlance . Ham-

mersley takes a similar view: he uses the te rm “insightful descriptions,”stating that the aim of ethnographic desciption is “to present phenomena

in new and revealing ways” (1992, p. 13) .

Me, I prefer the notion of a point and a punch line , a metaphor that

links well with the notion of ethnography as text and the concept of the

1168 Bate

“theatre of language .” A good punch line in ethnography is like a good

tune, one that you can’t stop humming once you’ve heard it (and when

did you last feel that about an Academy of Managem ent Journal article? !)

The punch line gives the research a point, but it also synthe sizes, synopsize s,

or simplifie s a complex story, and effects some kind of closure for the

reade r, which can be deeply satisfying, even bewitching at times. The best

punch line s are often the one s that come out of the blue , that surprise us

or challenge our take n for granted, commonsensical view of the world. This

is Lange r’s “significant form” (1953), an idea or image which through sym-

bols enable s people to realize something that was previously unre alized,

and comprehend something that was previously not comprehended.

The following are some organizational examples of ethnography which of-

fer the reader a particularly noteworthy “insightful description” or punch line:

John Brewer and Kathleen Magee’s (1991) ethnography of the Royal

Ulster Constabulary (RUC) revealed that RUC office rs were able to tol-

erate conditions of extreme personal dange r and stress by using diffe rent

kinds of discourse : the “skills discourse” focuse d on survival skills, e.g., hang

around kids, buy them ice pops—“If it keeps me alive , I’ll do it.” The “fa-

talism discourse” took the line that “If they’re going to ge t you, the y’re

going to get you,” and “If you were to worry about it, you’d be a nervous

wreck.” The “routinization discou rse” highlighte d the everydayne ss of the

risks: “You get used to it,” “It’s a way of life for us” (pp. 163-168) . It was

through the use of such standard scripts that they were able to “normalize ”the threat of dange r and thus reduce stress levels.

Still on the subje ct of language , McCourt Perring’s (1994) study of the

impact of care in the community legislation on mental health patients

showed that the transfe r of these people from hospital to group homes

resulted in some improve ment in their lives, but the overall success of the

proje ct was significantly reduced as a result of the metaphors chosen for

social relations in the new organization. For example , the use of the term

“family” homes, intended to evoke an image of caring, actually also implie d

hierarchy, by gende r and age, and through the use of this metaphor the

disempowerment and infantalization of clients were in fact maintaine d.

Gideon Kunda’s ethnography of a large American high-te ch organiza-

tion revisits that age -old OB concept of “burnout.” One of the new insights

it provide d was that burnout actually had a positive side to it. The study

from the actor’s view showed that it was a way of communicating one’scommitment to the company:

Displaying symptoms of burnout is one way of sending signals to one’s superiors.It is a sign that one is heavily invested in work, proof that one is allowing one’sexperience to be dominated by the requirements of the member role, evidence of

commitment and se lf-sacrifice, and from this perspective, a call for some respe ct,

a declaration that one has become a casualty. (1992, pp. 202-203)

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1169

It was of course demeaning but it could be uplifting, too. “Many mem-

bers feel some pride in surviving burnout or living with its threat. It is a

battle scar, a purple heart . . . an indication that one’s heart is in the right

place ” (p. 204) .

Clark Molstad’s ethnographic research among industrial brewery work-

ers in Los Ange les resonates with Kunda. He showed that feelings of al-

ienation and powerlessness are lessened as the result of worke rs taking

pride and satisfaction in the ir ability to endure hardship—the “pride of

endurance .” This pride gives them back some of the self-confide nce they

lose when encounte ring situations which they cannot control. “Like the

early Christians being fed to the lions, these workers presume their suffer-

ing counts for something” (1996, p. 1).

And finally, anothe r police study by Malcolm Young (1991) looke d at

the different ways people were treated by the police when they were taken

into custody. There appe ared to be two distinct types of treatment: some

people were subje ct to “hard” enforcement, like aggressive verbal directive s

and no blanke ts for sleeping on. The gaole rs would go down to “feed and

water” them, as they would a zoo animal; any kind of breakfast, no matter

how awful, was “too good for them,” the “scum,” the “dross,” the “dregs

of socie ty.” Other people , some of whom had committed much more se-

rious crimes, were subje ct to a much “softer” régime. The significant insight

on Young’s part was that there appe ared to be a constant pressure within

the police culture to pull all “clients” into a black and white binary, and

the decision one way or the othe r was like ly to be made without consciously

setting out to do so, usually within twenty seconds of arrival! This is an

exemplification of a bigger human issue around social labe ling:

The polarities and oppositions reve aled in this case study exemplify the logic of

basic police modes of thought, echoing the Lévi-Straussian contention that a

universalistic me taphoric concern in man is to use his own cultural identity and set

it auspiciously against the others, who are to be despised and cast with inhuman

or animal qualities. (p. 150)

A good punch line should evoke an intellectual or emotional response .

The whole point and punch line about anthropology itse lf, which I have tried

to conve y in this review article , is that it is research from the mind and the

heart, which relies upon the practice of both reflexivity and subje ctivity to

guard against the excesses of either. The whole endeavor smacks of the child

rushing frenetically around trying to capture bubbles before they disappear for

ever into the ether, random, opportunistic, partial and unsyste matic, and prob-

ably, to scientists at least, quite pathe tic. But why? For what reason? Simply

because these “bubble s” contain the essence of human life as it is experienced.

And in a world of decaffeinate d coffee, fat-free foods, alcohol-fre e lager, and

1170 Bate

pain-free video games, surely it can’t be bad that there is one subject at least

that is “leaving it in” rather than “taking it out.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to my colleague Raza Khan for contributing some of the

ideas to this paper and helping with the lite rature search.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

PAUL BATE is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Manage ment at the University of Bath,

working primarily on the theory and practice of change within public and private sector or-ganizations. He was until recently the Director of the Centre for the Study of Organizational

Change (C-SOC), which is internationally known for its anthropological and qualitative studiesof the manage ment process. He has extensive research and consulting experience with major

organizations in Britain and abroad, and has published widely in the field of cultural change.His latest book, Strategies for Cultural Change (1994), was shortlisted for the MCA Best Man-

agement Book of the Year award. He also lectures widely in the U.S., Far East, Scandinavia,and Europe and has recently been international guest speaker at a number of acade mic con-

ferences. He is currently immersed in an ethnographic study of a hospital which is attemptingto fundamentally reconfigure its culture in order to provide a different and better kind of

“patient focused care” for the future. Paul holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Whatever Hap pen ed to Organ izational Anthropology 1175